I practice meditation unconnected to any notion of spirituality. Other folks have their various schools of thought on the subject and I'm not making this post to dispute in anyway their spiritual beliefs or practices.

When I meditate, the act of controlled breathing and the mental repetition of a phrase (commonly referred to as Mantra*) slows my heartbeat and lowers my blood pressure (I've checked before and after.)

Rather than thinking about "nothing," my mind begins to slow down (background noise) to the point where in between the inhale and exhale their is a moment where my background noise goes silent -the longer you practice, the easier you can get to this point, but it takes time to get there, and it's typically better in short sessions (5-10 minutes) than longer ones. I've tried to extend my sessions and it isn't there for me yet.

In practice, this works. When I went through a two week period where on top of my underlying issues (PTSD, chronic pain and serious medical stuff) I lost two friends and had to go to two different services in one day. One of those friends was a very unexpected loss (young guy, extremely fit, heart attack in sleep. I knew him before he was born) successful meditation was out of the question.

Several posters have mentioned various physical or mental activities that they count as meditation, and they are are correct as far as it goes. What you do while exercising, playing music etc. is a singular focus that is definitely a cousin to actual meditation but the component that is missing is those silent gaps where the mental background noise is silent while the mind is not singularly focused on a mechanical task - I'd often get into a singular focus while riding my bike at the track or on the mountain at speed, but it's pretty far removed from the moments of mental silence achieved through actual meditation.

It's a short easy read. The author is a woman and it's chatty at times, but you can easily skip (and she encourages readers to do so) to the chase. It's a western oriented "I want it now" introduction to the basics of meditation.

If you're inclined to read something written by a long time practitioner of meditation that isn't a dry read, I highly recommend Carlos Santana's autobiography, The Universal Tone:

He cops right up front to his nickname, Cosmic Carlos, but his pov on meditation and his spiritual based journey related to his struggles over self and outside forces is a worthwhile read. I don't particularly subscribe to his total program, but the notion of a universal tone is something I've felt for a very long time and can't articulate how this works, except to say that I've felt something awake and in dreams that is directly related to the energy of sound and the pure joy of that consciousness.

One of the good things that race school and track days did for me was conditioning my mind away from immediate obsessive self criticism (Dummy! HTF did you miss that?) Most negative reinforcement comes from within ourselves, not others.

if I blew an entry-apex-exit it didn't matter short of crashing or taking some other rider out. My immediate concern was doing the job properly in the next corner and when I lapped through the blown corner I wouldn't make the same mistake.

There were a few such things floating around back then, eh? . I went with the group that had a guru my age (15-ish at the time).
1973.... festival at the Astrodome...people hypothesizing about "a thousand years of peace", and whether the 'Dome
would lift off the ground (and what, do somersaults? ). I ate that stuff up like candy . 20 years later I came to see
that nobody could do for me anything I couldn't do for myself

This discussion is really interesting, as I come from the opposite problem where my mind idles and switches off easily, and so instead of looking to calm it down, I find that I am often looking for stimulation. I've attempted to do meditation before to find out what it's all about, but I just end up falling asleep.